Lonesome Town Part 15

"The trouble with you, W. W., is simply this," he propounded, referring to her late allegation in superior vein.

"W. W.'? Explanation!" she demanded.

Attempting a look of polite surprise, he obliged. "Inclusive for 'Wicked Wife' and 'Wiley Wirgin.' I am here to say that, as your s.e.x is run nowadays, it is hard to tell which are which. In this woman's town none of 'em seem to want to wear the marriage brand. Many a Mrs. calls herself Miss. You keep too close to your mother, likely, to be yoked without her knowing it. But how could an outsider know, for instance, whether or not your cousin, Miss Lauderdale--"

"Jane married? What an idea!" As expected, Irene interrupted on getting the general drift of his remarks. "Not but what she's plenty old enough.

She's _twenty-six_-think of it! Maybe I oughtn't to tell her age. Still, any one can see it on her face, don't you think so-or _do_ you? And it isn't as though you were interested in her instead of me. Jane is considered still very attractive, though. A good many men have admired her even since my day and degeneration. Do you know, I never can resist adding that 'degeneration' to 'my day'! It's trite, I know, but it's true-too-trite-true. Jane has a whole raft of women friends. She's always off visiting them. She is down at Hempstead Plains now with one of them."

Pape rose in his stirrups, as it turned out, merely to hold back a low-hung bough which had threatened to brush the girl's artfully tousled locks.

"Fortunately," she babbled on, "Mills Harford still wants to marry her.

Mother and I both think she ought to snap him up. Don't you? Harfy has money and he isn't bad looking, although I myself shouldn't consider him as a suitor. I guess he knows that." She transferred her glance from him to the path ahead. "Here's the longest straight-away in Central Park,"

she cried. "I don't want to leave you again-better come along!"

Bombed again! Pape pressed one hand against his brow as he shook Dot's rein, a signal to follow the spurt to which Irene had put the academy mare. He wasn't given to headaches from any pace of his horse, but a sudden hurting sensation had shot through his brain.

Jane Lauderdale wasn't, then, married so far as her relatives knew. And she was covering her whereabouts from them as she had tried to cover from him. By no tax of the imagination could he think of the peeling old brick house on East Sixty-third Street as the "place" of any of those elite "women friends" mentioned; yet even could he do so, why one with a husband or other male attache who would wait and kiss their fair guest at the door?

Incidentally, Polkadot won the brush over this tangent, coming up from the rear at an "I'll-show-you" pace. Willingly enough he waited for the black mare where the bridle path again became winding.

Irene, on catching up, looked him over with irritation that proved to have nothing to do with the comparative speed of their mounts, as just counted against her.

"I don't believe you were listening to me at all back there," she charged. "I _dote_ on deep, dark natures, but this doesn't seem to me the time or place to get mysterious. Come out of it and pay me 'tentions!"

He undertook to obey. "I'd be tickled pink to pay you anything that--"

"You're a deeper and darker color than pink already," she interrupted, "but you don't look tickled at all. Here, see for yourself!"

From her breast-pocket she produced a flat vanity case covered with the black suede of her coat; flipped open a small mirror; held it above the horn of his saddle where he could look into it. His countenance was, indeed, nearer beet-red than pink. After a wicked moue over his discomfiture, she took out a "stick" and proceeded openly, calmly, critically, to rouge her youth-ripe lips.

"I'll pay you," she proposed with a smile, "anything that you consider fair for the thoughts that brought that blush."

"I was just wondering if-thinking that--" he floundered. "What a similarity of coloring there is among you, your mother and your-your cousin, you know, and yet how different you are."

"You're cheating, Why-Not. You know you weren't thinking anything so ba.n.a.l. Do you expect me to pay for that?"

She pulled her trim little black closer to his rangy piebald and leaned over toward him. And he bent toward her; somehow, couldn't help it. A moment her eyes glittered close under his. Her blown black hair strove toward his lips. A pout that would have tempted the palest-corpuscled of men curved the lips so carefully prepared-for what?

Peter Pape's corpuscles, as happened, weren't pale. Then, too, he lately had been bombed out of some few; traditions and restraints. He caught his breath; caught the idea; caught her arm.

"Child, do you know that-Do you understand-"

"You _are_ nice-nice!"

With complete understanding, she awaited his pleasure and, possibly, her own.

Irene had shown selectiveness in the set for the scene. The path at that point was low-leaved and lone. Nothing broke the silence except the siren-chorus of invisible cars. Nothing marred the woodsy fragrances except the reek of gasoline. Nothing held Pape back except the realization that, once he had kissed this almost irresistible young lady of to-day--

At that, only Polkadot saved the situation. Whether intolerant of his propinquity with a mere hireling, whether sensing the predicament of a man-master who never had brushed stirrups with a woman unless on some picnic ride with a crowd along, or whether too fed-up on stable fodder to endure such inactivity one second longer, at any rate, the painted pony forewent all equine etiquette; bolted.

Not until they had made a flying turn at Harlem Mere and started cross-park toward the West Path did Pape's strong hand at the rein dictate that they let the trailing black catch up. When again the two horses, as nicely matched for contrast as were their riders, paced side by side in form--

"You all right, dar-rling?" panted Irene, from excitement and exercise beautiful as the favorite "still" of a picture queen.

"Right as-as you nearly had me wrong."

At his serious look, she laughed up at him shamelessly. "You missed your chance that time. And a miss to me is as good as many miles."

"Don't you mean," he asked, "that a Miss is as bad as a Mrs.?"

The rest of the ride he insisted on playing the heavy respectful. He wasn't to be baby-vamped into making love to any girl; to that he had made up his mind flyingly but firmly. Tempting, indeed, was she. But until he should commit himself to temptation, she should not over-tempt him. Even in this, their "day and degeneration," he claimed the deciding vote of the male. Why not?

After that _he_ chose the topics of conversation, favoring one introduced that day by the girl's own mother-genealogy. Irene's answers were considerably less animated than his questions.

Yes, "family" was the hobby-pace of her only mamma. She, herself, didn't care a Russian kopeck from what a man came, so that he was present when she wanted him. Still, if Pape aspired to get along with parent-Helene, he'd have to trump her genealogical lead. Could he and would he produce a family escutcheon?

If there was one to be had in town! So he promised with hand-on-heart.

He had been born and bred and all that, he declared. And he had reasons for wis.h.i.+ng to be properly installed as a friend of the Sturgis family.

Would an escutcheon really need to be laid within range of the maternal lorgnette? If so, just what was an escutcheon most like?

Ha, he began to see! It was, then, an authenticated something which one emblazoned on what he owned to show that he owned it, like the interrogation point which he branded on his cattle back home? He explained the significance of the name of the distant Queer Question Ranch back in h.e.l.lroaring Valley, a name derived from his own whys and why-nots. He'd see what he could do toward authenticating a creditable escutcheon and exhibiting the same to mamma.

They had curved around North Meadow, had skirted the silver circle of the receiving reservoir and were approaching The Green, before Pape's absorption in this self-selected topic was broken. He had cast a surrept.i.tious glance toward a clump of poplars that disputed possession of a hillock with an outcrop of granite. Beneath them he had seen what caused his heart to take one quick flop, then stand still.

What next occurred was better understood by Friend Polkadot than Friend Girl. The horse received a knee-pressed signal, the meaning of which was clear, if not the particular reason therefor. Just why Why-Not should wish to rid himself of a riding-mate he had seemed to find so delightful--

However, Dot was enough of a soldier never to argue actual orders. He promptly went lame. And he rather enjoyed doing so. The trick had been dear to him ever since the petting lavished upon him during his recovery from a real injury years ago. He slowed to a stop; up-held his fore-hoof; himself demanded "'tentions."

"What's matter, old hoss?"

Perfect in his part of this play to retire from trail company no longer congenial, the Westerner flung himself off-saddle, accepted and examined the pitiful "paw." Even when the supposed victim winked and drew back his upper lip in a wide horse grin, there showed no change in the poker face of the Montana man.

"Is it a sprain? Does it hurt so much as all that?" Although Irene would doubtless-and justly-have been furious to know it, her concern was the one real factor in the incident.

"He may have slipped on that bolt of his back yonder." Pape wasn't used even to suggesting lies and his voice sounded as unconvincing to himself as though pitched from the vicinity of Was.h.i.+ngton Square. "Serve him right if he did. At that, I'm afraid our ride's ended for to-day.

Fortunately--" He paused in a search of the surroundings, presumedly to get their exact bearings; in fact, to convince himself that he had seen what he had seen. "Fortunately the stable I'm using lies just over there on Central Park West."

"And I was just about to propose that we make the reverse round." Irene pouted like the spoiled child she was. "I'd set my heart on a real sprint between my mare and your c.o.c.ksure charger. It would have been so sort of symbolic of life to-day, you know-a race of male versus female."

Her heart for horses, however, soon softened in pity for Polkadot. Pape liked her cordially as he hated himself for the endearments and consolations she showered upon that supposed unfortunate.

"Don't you worry one little bit, Polkadot dar-rling," she urged, leaning to one of the pinto's forward-flicking ears. "If it isn't all right by to-morrow-day, Irene will come around herself and rub it well for you."

When Dot, having received no "cure" signal, limped more noticeably than before as they neared his stable-hostelry, she added in her sweet-lisped baby talk:

"Just a few steps more, booful boy. Don't 'oo care. You'll be all well to-morrow-day."

Considering the tenderness of her mood toward the four-footed fakir, her change was sudden and radical toward the biped of the pair when she grasped that he intended to send her home in a taxi.